


spare knife skills ma'am

by AosSelkie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Brief Description of Blood, Discussion of melanie’s unhealthy coping mechanisms, F/F, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kissing, Knives, Scars, Slaughter Avatar Melanie King, are throwing knives legal in britain? author has no idea, georgie decides she needs a way to defend herself, kind of, melanie and georgie got together the night the flesh attacked, no beta we die like men, so melanie teaches her to throw a knife, takes place nebulously in season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25481269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AosSelkie/pseuds/AosSelkie
Summary: A moment of quiet, Georgie thinks about hands and knives.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	spare knife skills ma'am

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gay for knife ladies, and you should be too  
> This is my first fic uh... ever! I love Georgie and Melanie and I definitely want to write more exploring their dynamic.

Georgie has always liked Melanie’s hands.

They’re rough from scaling fences and fixing recording equipment, and never relaxed. Threads of tension are always clear in Melanie’s fingers, like she’s ready to crush something in them, like she’s anticipating an attack.

Georgie leans into Melanie’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around her waist and burying her mouth into the crook of her neck, swaying Melanie gently as she chops carrots for dinner. Melanie’s hands shake these days, save for when she can wrap her fingers around her knives and when Georgie holds them still. Georgie doesn’t miss their steadiness. She likes being a rock for Melanie, likes being able to choose to hold her restless energy still. She watches as Melanie slices. She’s so focused when she has something sharp to handle, Georgie thinks, letting her eyes follow the movement.

Melanie’s fingers are long, light brown, and Georgie watches as the tendons move beneath her scars. Since the bullet, her scars have multiplied with her knife collection, patterning her hands and fingers in pink and red ridges. From the night the Flesh attacked the Institute there are two long, thick scars that ripple parallel down her left forearm in the shape of two blunt, gruesomely separated teeth, and they split Melanie’s tattoos open.

_Months ago, at three in the morning, Georgie had opened the door and taken a second to recognize Melanie, covered in gore that glistened under the weak yellow light of the hall. She noticed Melanie’s hands first, blood slick and tight around what looked like a hunting knife at her side. Georgie reached for her, grasping her shaking shoulders, pulling her inside and tugging off her bloodsoaked jacket._

_“It’s not mine. It’s- it’s not mine, Georgie,” said Melanie roughly, her eyes red and wild._

_“Okay,” said Georgie, and she was calm as she twisted her fingers through Melanie’s dripping hair and watched bits of unidentifiable gristle slide onto her white carpet. That’ll stain, she thought distantly._

_“I just needed to see you.” Melanie’s voice broke and Georgie felt her insides catch fire._

_She traced a line of red down Melanie’s shirt, a little awestruck, curled her fingers into Melanie’s collar, and pulled her down into a fierce, long-awaited kiss that filled her mouth with iron._

Months later, Melanie’s kisses still taste like someone else’s blood.

She knows, deep down, that Melanie only survived because of that goddamn bullet, the god or thing or whatever that twisted her into the clipped-toned, sporadically violent girl Georgie has almost grown used to. (Melanie kicks herself out as soon as she starts screaming and that’s that, for now. She won’t let Georgie take her to therapy.)

Melanie’s always afraid, Georgie thinks, pressing her cheek against the racing pulse point on Melanie’s neck, enjoying the shiver that travels up her back.

Georgie has always been grateful for Melanie’s fear. It drives her just as much as her anger does, doesn’t make her freeze up or shut down. Melanie’s anger may have saved her colleagues, but her fear keeps her alive, chopping onions in Georgie’s kitchen.

Georgie wonders often what she would have done in Melanie’s situation, and the answer always comes to her dull and final: died, probably.

Melanie could protect people when she went into the Slaughter state. It hurt her, made her lash out, but she could genuinely hold her own. Georgie had never felt quite so useless as when Melanie was hurt and Georgie couldn't do anything about it. She knows that if she had been in the Insitute that night, she would have been torn up by the _thing_ that had ripped twin lines in Melanie's arms. She would have died, plain and simple.

That’s a bit of a problem. Georgie doesn’t particularly want to die. She can't fear it, not anymore, but she has a podcast to run and a cat to feed and friends and a girlfriend to hold in the hours she isn’t dragged into that hellhole institute. Georgie isn’t fond of the scent of death that she catches between those heavy metal doors when she drops Melanie off for work, and she can’t shake the feeling that more is coming.

She doesn’t have any way to keep herself alive, which she finds herself suddenly and deeply annoyed by.

“Hey, Mels,” she murmurs into Melanie’s shoulder, sliding her hand down Melanie’s arm and stilling her knife.

“Yeah?”

“Would you teach me how to throw a knife?”

Melanie sets down the kitchen knife and turns in Georgie’s arms, loosely wrapping her own around Georgie’s neck and meeting her eyes quizzically.

“Er… yeah, I could try. I’ve never actually taught anyone else before.”

“I don’t mind, really,” responds Georgie.

“Mmm. Okay. Okay, sure,” Melanie says, and Georgie watches with wary eyes for the tautness in her brow that comes when the Slaughter is pulling at Melanie’s bones, but it doesn’t appear.

“Good.” Melanie gives a small smile and doesn’t say anything more, just soundly kisses Georgie on the lips and goes back to cooking in companionable silence.

* * *

They stand in Georgie's living room, cleared of the coffee table, an old, pockmarked target against the wall.

“Okay, first thing is you’ve gotta stay steady on your feet. Yeah, there’s fine,” said Melanie, stepping forward to angle Georgie’s body. Her eyes are sparkling. Georgie isn’t sure she’s seen her this excited in days. “Right foot forward, yeah?”

“Alright,” responds Georgie, adjusting in kind as Melanie presses a flat, curved blade into her hand. She flips it in her palm and has the sudden urge to test how sharp it is. She presses her thumb against the blade’s point.

“Then you--” Melanie catches her and bats her hand away. “No- a-- Georgie, are you fucking mad? You’re going to slice yourself open!”

“Sorry! Sorry,” Georgie giggles.

Melanie grins and then adopts a faux strict face. “Those knives are meant to pierce a target, not your fingers, you menace.”

Georgie grins back. “Doesn’t seem to stop you,” she responds. She hears herself and falters, not entirely sure if that’s swinging below the belt. Melanie’s smile slips briefly and guilt pools in Georgie’s gut. “Sorry. I know you-- yeah.”

“Its… it’s fine, just,” Melanie clenches her own hand, open, then closed. She breaks off for a second before shaking her head. “Right, anyway, you have to hold it like a hammer.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Just like that.”

Georgie frowns.

“I always sort of thought you had… I dunno, some kind of secret knife hold. Don’t some people hold the blades, or am I completely misremembering all those movies?”

Melanie’s smile returns and she shakes her head again. “ _You_ don’t throw with the blade, at least not yet. This way’s a lot more straightforward.”

“Right, got you.” Melanie weaves her way around Georgie and holds her wrist lightly, bending her arm back and pushing it forward. Georgie is very aware of her skin prickling with Melanie's warmth and breath. Melanie always runs hot.

“So now you throw like this, and make sure to look at the target. You *should* be close enough from here.” Melanie steps back, and Georgie focuses and throws. It hits off the side of the target and skitters on the floor.

“Ohh close!” cheers Melanie. “Here, let me show you how to get it to go straight.”

Georgie hands Melanie the knife and watches as she stands, pulls back, and throws in one fluid motion. The knife makes a satisfying thunk as it sinks right into the target. She moves like a snake, Georgie thinks, not for the first time. Quick and smooth. Sure of herself.

Georgie really wants to kiss her senseless.

Georgie is getting distracted from the technical aspects of her knife lesson.

She picks up another knife and stands beside Melanie, aiming, throwing, missing, and stooping again for another blade. She thinks she understands the power Melanie feels holding one of these. She feels stable, if imprecise. Georgie has never thought of herself as a fighter, but the weight of a knife in her hand feels familiar. Holding Melanie feels like holding a knife sometimes, a tool that doesn’t belong to anyone, ready to cut. Georgie steps back.

"You're doing great, George," Melanie says, sitting cross-legged like a kid and smiling up at Georgie from the floor. "You're not flinching; that's always the hardest part."

Georgie smiles. She doesn't remind Melanie that she hasn't flinched in years.

She focuses on the red circle some three meters away, pulls back once more, and throws. The blade lodges into the edge of the target and she laughs, pride swelling in her. Melanie claps from the floor. 

After a few tries, the knife finds its home in the very center of the target, and Melanie whoops, leaping to her feet, and kisses her on the cheek.

"God, you're a natural!" she crows. There’s a playful pride in her eyes that sends a familiar burning down Georgie’s body.

"I'm going to take your place," says Georgie smugly. "I'm the knife girl now." She means it a little more than she lets on.

"Giving me a run for my money," says Melanie, half-smile still hanging on her face.

Georgie cups Melanie’s face in her hands and kisses her hard, and Melanie hums low in her throat. Georgie sighs as Melanie's warm hands slide around her waist. She kisses Melanie like a girl who can't stop thinking about dying and Melanie kisses her like she's ready to rip someone apart. Melanie stumbles backward onto the sofa and pulls Georgie down to straddle her lap. Georgie thinks Melanie tastes like metal, and then Melanie bites lightly at her lip and Georgie doesn't think at all.

Georgie loses track of time. She feels strong like this, above Melanie, pushing her hands into the tight, dark coils of her blue-dyed hair. 

Melanie pulls away, grinning up at Georgie and sitting back against the sofa. “Hey, what was that for?”

Georgie breathes heavily as Melanie laces their hands together. “I like... this,” she says vaguely. 

Melanie lets out a cracking little laugh. “Yeah, er, me too. Ten out of ten.”

Georgie pulls Melanie’s hands against her chest. “I like feeling close to you, Mels,” she amends. “I- I get how this could make you feel strong.”

Melanie is looking at her so softly. 

“I just. You know this all isn’t the healthiest, right?” She searches Melanie’s eyes, watches her tense up, watches the tenderness drain from her eyes. “I’m still going to help you out of this, Mels. But I get it. I get the... power you get from this.”

Melanie looks away and pulls her hands away from Georgie. Georgie _feels_ Melanie’s pulse start to race under her. “I don’t need help, Georgie. It’s not your goddamn responsibility.” The bite is back in Melanie’s voice. 

Georgie stares Melanie down. The Slaughter always came in phases. 

“You do. And you’re right, it’s not my responsibility, it’s yours.” She slides off Melanie’s lap. “I can’t force you to do anything you won’t do yourself, Mels.” 

“I’m surviving. I’m protecting people.” Melanie’s voice is shaking. Her fists are balled against her thighs, trembling faster than usual. 

“You’re not just supposed to survive,” says Georgie. “You’re not supposed to do it alone,” she insists. 

“I’m fine, Georgie,” says Melanie, voice cracking on “fine.” Georgie realizes she’s trying not to yell. 

“I know you’re not, Melanie. You haven’t been for months,” Georgie knows she’s pushing, but Melanie needs this. Georgie needs this. "You haven't told me anything about work since Jon came back, and I'm not going to just sit here and let you keep trying to push me away, I'm-" 

“Georgie will you PLEASE shut up, I—“ Melanie grits her teeth and then lets out a litlte sob, grabbing Georgie’s hands back before she can recoil. She grimaces, then breathes. “I’m— I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just not ready yet.”

She sounds so small, and Georgie squeezes her hands, setting her jaw. 

“I’ll be ready to talk about it," says Melanie, almost a whisper. Georgie blinks. That's more than usual. 

"I will. I know I will, I just really can’t right now.” Melanie's eyes are pleading. Georgie kisses her scarred knuckles. “I just can’t,” Melanie finishes. 

“Okay,” says Georgie. “Okay.” She looks pointedly at Melanie. "We'll talk about this later."

Melanie nods.

It’s a small victory, but as they move to clean up the knives scattering Georgie’s living room, Georgie thinks that maybe Melanie gets that Georgie wants to protect her, too. That maybe she’ll let her. 

Georgie intends to make sure of it. 


End file.
